AutoCAD Exchange

February 08, 2011

Removing Viewport Layer Overrides in AutoCAD for Mac

Over a year ago, I wrote about using a hidden option in the VPLAYER command to reset viewport layer overrides from the AutoCAD command-line. I want to revisit this subject because this option is now even more relevant to AutoCAD for Mac users.

In case you're not familiar with the feature: viewport layer overrides is a feature we added back in AutoCAD 2008 that lets you override a layers color, linetype, lineweight and plot style in viewports. This allows objects to display themselves differently in different viewports without affecting the global layer properties.

In the Windows version of AutoCAD, you can quickly remove some or all of your layer viewport overrides directly from the right-click context menu in the Layer Property Manager dialog:

These same options don't exist in the context menu of the AutoCAD for Mac Layer palette (even though the documentation states that they do) and it may not be obvious how to remove your layer viewport overrides.

One method is to right-click the border of a viewport (or selected viewports) and choose Remove Viewport Overrides for All Layers from the context menu:

This is something of a brute force approach because it provides no granularity in which overrides you are removing for which layers; it's all or nothing. Still, it does work.

The other option is to use the hidden reMoveoverrides option of the VPLAYER command as detailed in this post from December 2009:

This option gives you full control over what overrides you are removing, from what layers, and in what viewports. It's also worth noting that the VPLAYER command can also be used to create layer viewport overrides in both AutoCAD for Windows and AutoCAD for Mac.